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Letter to the editor: $12 billion aid for farmers is a bribe to ag states

By Brad Mills from jamestown on Aug 10, 2018 at 6:40 a.m.

By | Jamestown

It’s now obvious that President Trump’s trade war is causing some serious problems for agriculture, with soybean prices taking a major hit. All of us “leftists” have been accused of being alarmists and politicizing the issue, but the fact that the Trump administration is now planning to dish out $12 billion in federal aid to mitigate the issue is proof that we have been right all along.

Farmers who voted for Trump have only themselves to blame for this because they knew what they were getting when they cast their vote. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that when you vote for a chaotic, reckless, irrational president, you will get chaotic, reckless and irrational policies. Think about this: The president starts an insane trade war, and then when it starts causing problems the response is to hand out a bunch of government money rather than change the bad policy.

The hypocrisy among North Dakota Republicans in head spinning. These same people who complain about big government spending, federal deficits and welfare handouts are now the same ones who adamantly support this. What I think is if we truly are a conservative “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” Republican state, then let’s do it for real. Let’s reject these government handouts and let the free market decide.